“I guess I’m taking a different approach,” says Amanda Chase, an assistant city attorney in the Northeast Division’s Community Prosecutor’s office. She has to, she says, as the city doesn’t own any properties eligible for Operation Teardown this year.

“So I am trying to get some more referrals from the community, and that’s what this is all about: a program to help our neighborhoods,” she says. “So if there are communities or neighborhoods who would benefit from the program, I would like them to know more about it and at least submit a property for evaluation.” She says the Texas National Guard expects to raze about 26 to 30 properties during its visit, most of which will be single-family homes, though the occasional small business could be eligible.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings at an Operation Crackdown teardown in East Oak Cliff in May 2012

But here’s the deal: You can’t just submit some next-door neighbor’s house, claim it’s a vacant crack house and watch the dozers smash it into oblivion. There are rules, as in: It has to be a vacant and “substandard” structure, it has to be in a part of town known for its heavy drug arrests, there can’t be “complicated ownership issues” and — this is very important — the owner has to sign off on the knock-knock-down. If the folks making the referral to the city attorney’s office don’t know the owner, the city will try to track them down — if that’s possible, and it’s often not in places like South Dallas, where deeds are often inscrutable histories belonging to dozens of past and present owners, some of whom live in faraway places.

“The program is a benefit to the owner of the property, as well as the whole community,” says Chase. “The owner does not have to pay for the demolition of the structure, and they get to keep the property. But there’s a lot of legwork at the beginning of the process on our part. We have to find a meet the owners of the structures to make sure they are interested. Sometimes properties do fall through the cracks, and it take someone in the community to say, ‘This is substandard and vacant.’ But the city attorneys will do due diligence to make sure we have clear title on the property.”

The city also has to make sure the gas and electric are cut off to the house before the Texas National Guard shows up. It also has to go through the Dallas Police Department, Code Compliance and Sanitation. “It’s a lot of labor on our part,” says Chase. But long story short: The Texas National Guard will knock the houses down. The city will haul off the wreckage.

So, here’s how it works. Email Anica Lazarin with the address of the home you’d like to see razed, along with any ownership information you can provide (for instance, the name of the person who you think owns it and their phone number or email address email — whatever you can find). And make sure to put “OPERATION CRACKDOWN” in the subject line. You have until Friday.

Discarded tires along one of the Trnity River's tributaries near Rochester Park in Southeast Dallas in 2010

In January the Dallas City Council OK’d spending $3.25 million to fish old tires out of the Trinity River (and Lake Ray Hubbard, but it’s really the Trinity River). But before the unanimous OK, there was also the promise of a “master security plan” come fall intended to address the various issues and inadequacies when it comes to keeping the rubber out of the river. This afternoon the council’s Budget, Finance & Audit Committee will get a sneak peek at what that means, but long story short: The city needs to do a better job of education and enforcement. So there’s that.

Longer story longer: Code Compliance is supposed to keep an eye on tire shops and haulers; while the Dallas Marshal’s Office and its illegal dump team is tasked with looking out for tossing tires hither and yon. Clearly, that is not enough: “The illegal disposal of scrap tires is still a problem and significant amounts are spent to clean up areas where this problem exists,” says the briefing, which points out that during FY2013 a contractor snatched out of Trinity (near Interstate 20 and Dowdy Ferry Road alone) some 3,000 tires.

Some of that can be blamed on the chapter in the City Code dealing with scrap-tire transporters, which says anyone hauling the used rubber has to have a valid, nontransferable permit and a manifest. But no one really looks at those manifests, which is why they’re not, well, the most complete documents in the world, according to the briefing. And, worse, there’s “no requirement for shops/retailers to provide records for City review that would indicate the number of tires purchased for resale and tires sold.” So why even bother — especially when it’s just cheaper to dump ‘em anyway?

And it’s not like the city can do much to enforce its own rules, not when there are a whole two code enforcers tasked with making sure everybody plays by the rules. It’s understatement to call that a losing battle, which is why the city’s ramped up its enforcement efforts: The city has 11 marshals patrolling those areas where tires go to die, and another two have been requested for the next fiscal year. Citations are low (82 last year, down from 136 the previous fiscal year); arrests, way lower (as in, zero so far this year).

So the city is proposing anything and everything to stop tire-tossing, from holding up certificates of occupancy for offenders to offering a “bounty program” for folks who do the right thing. Also, it could pay to snitch, per the proposal for a “reward program for reporting of illegal tire dumping that results in prosecution.” Alas, nothing about Dwaine Caraway’s suggestion to ring the river with a wire intended to keep, well, everyone out?

A stray dog suffering from mange wanders the streets of the La Bajada neighborhood in West Dallas.

The Dallas City Council found something it could agree on Monday morning: There are entirely too many stray dogs in the city limits, especially south of the city center, and not nearly the number of traps needed to contain the problem.

According to animal services manager Jody Jones during the morning briefing, the city has just 22 traps large enough to hold stray dogs — and some of them have been stolen or are broken, according to Code Compliance Director Jimmy Martin. And that, in the words of council member Rick Callahan, is “kind of a mind-boggling thing” in a city the size of Dallas.

“A lot of kids can’t play in the street [and] a lot of seniors are afraid to walk” in their neighborhoods, he said. “We’d like to solve that.”

To that end, he and colleague Dwaine Caraway, chair of the Quality of Life Committee, suggested fencing off some 20 acres of city-owned land and letting them roam free till the city can figure out what to do with them. Caraway, who’s not afraid to let loose with a nutty proposal, was, as always, absolutely serious.

He said it could be “a dog farm where we pick up [and drop off] the stray dogs and they can just run loose on 50 contained acres while we figure it out.” Said the representative for District 4, which is among the tops in stray-dog service calls, they have become the No. 1 complaint among his constituents, surpassing drug houses and smoke shops.

“People are afraid,” he said. “Children are afraid. I’ve had people call my office when children could not pass a house because of the pit pulls on the front porch. We cannot handle every single problem, but we must do the best we can. Right now it’s out of control.”

Jones and Martin do not disagree, which is why they’ve asked the Dallas City Attorney’s Office to revisit the animal ordinance. Jones said she wants the authority to issue civil citations to owners of strays, at least when they can be found. Right now, she told the council, animal services workers have to physically hand an owner a ticket. The ordinance rewrite, one of several proposed to the city attorney two weeks ago, will allow them to leave the notice at the owner’s home. Then, said Jones, “it becomes the owner’s responsibility to deal with it.”

Jones said the city’s going to begin “SMART Sweeps” of “target areas” where strays are an issue. Those sweeps will deal with everything from enforcement to education. Which is terrific, said Caraway and Callahan, but they worry it’s not enough, not yet. Callahan thinks a fenced-off area could serve as “a holding pattern till we can catch up.”

Meanwhile, Caraway had another (facetious) suggestion involving Sandy Greyson, the rep for Far North Dallas, where, apparently, every dog has a home.

“Ms. Greyson said she didn’t have any strays,” Caraway said, looking toward his vice chair. “I said, ‘Can I put 20 in a truck and bring ‘em over to your district?’”

A memo sent to council Friday night shows tires along the banks of the Trinity River.

On Wednesday the Dallas City Council will vote to spend that $3.25 million staff says it needed to snatch tires from the Trinity River and trash from Lake Ray Hubbard — though, mostly, this is all the Trinity. For evidence, look no further than the memo Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan sent to Mayor Mike Rawlings and the city council Friday night — the one below, the one titled “Tire Removal from the Trinity River.”

In it, Jordan answers a few questions several readers and council members had about the expenditure — and, just as important, what’s being done to crack down on dumpers tossing tires into the Trinity. She also wants to make it very, very clear: Using millions on a clean-up effort handled for years by generous volunteer organizations was a last resort. Jordan writes that there are areas of the Trinity — in this instance, between the Trinity River Audubon Center and Interstate 20 — “in which volunteers cannot safely reach tires,” which is why they’re calling in the contractors.

“This work requires scaling steep banks and standing in the river to hand remove and haul tires of all sizes that are often full of mud and wildlife,” writes Jordan. “Tire removal work in the river itself needs to be done in the summer when staff is addressing other creek and channel improvements.”

Jordan insists the city is doing its best to stop the tire-dumpers, with the Dallas Marshall’s Office Illegal Dump Team charged with making at least one trip to the Trinity every day. And they visit tire-repair shops to make sure they’re properly licensed and disposing of their scraps in compliance with local and state regs. But, clearly, much more needs to be done — because this $3 million’s just dedicated to one small stretch of the river, and there’s plenty more debris where that came from.

And so, says Jordan, four covert surveillance camera systems “will be concentrated in the areas of the Trinity River Corridor identified as active tire dump sites.” And the Caruth Foundation and the Trinity Trust are working on a “Master Security Plan” for the corridor. So … fingers crossed?

“This work includes identifying best practices across the country to address urban,natural and forest areas through the use of officers, community members and other resources,” Jordan tells the council. “It is anticipated that this Master Security Plan will be briefed to the Council this Fall.”

Just four days before the Dallas City Council is scheduled to finally crash into Uber, Lyft and all the other ride-sharing options now available to folks who won’t hail a cab, Uber announced it’s cutting prices in more than a dozen markets for UberX users. The company’s ride-sharing alternative to its higher-priced limo service has only been available in Dallas since November, when, much like the Edgar Winter Group, it rolled out free rides for a few days.

Some of the markets, especially on the West Coast, will see enormous plunges in prices — from 20 to 30 percent. Dallas riders will see their receipts shrink by around 12 percent, according to TechCrunch.

Uber’s not being shy about its intentions: It’s going directly after Lyft, Sidecar and all its other app-ordered competitors, as well as cities’ mass-transit options. UberX, says the company, is “cheaper than the bus (with fare splitting!).” But this is really about sticking it to the taxi companies — like, say, Yellow Cab — that claim Uber’s targeting them by unfairly circumventing city regulations.

“On average across all Uber cities, uberX is 26% cheaper than a taxi,” says Thursday’s posting. “In the end, tens of millions of city residents have a better, faster, and cheaper option to get around their city. FAR more reliable than TAXIs in every city we’re in. FAR more economically accessible to FAR more people. FAR higher quality and FAR more accountability than any other ride.”

Keep in mind, though, Uber and UberX are far from the same thing.

The former uses city-licensed limo drivers who shuttle riders in black sedans and SUVs. UberX, on the other hand, is a network of folks with their own cars who pick up passengers needing a lift. It’s often compared to hitchhiking via smartphone at a price. Drivers are vetted with background checks and interviews, but unlike their Uber counterparts, UberX’ers don’t have permits issued by city hall.

Monday’s meeting will be the first of three discussions scheduled this month. Also on the to-do list: a public forum from 5-7 p.m. January 21 in council chambers at 1500 Marilla, followed by a January 27 committee meeting during which the council will consider “whether to revise and/or amend current ordinance,” according to a November memo from committee chair Vonciel Jones Hill.

Siona Listokin, an assistant professor at George Mason University School of Public Policy, says most cities’ taxi regulations are antiquated and so firmly entrenched they seem to exist solely to help the legacy cab companies (especially, in Dallas’ case, the cab company that actually wrote them). But Uber has something the cab companies don’t: data, compiled by the very smartphones passengers and drivers use to communicate and calculate.

“The company’s business model depends on technology that matches driver and passenger locations, controls payments electronically, and evaluates driver conscientiousness,” writes Listokin. “The company has used its data to compute which city neighborhoods host the most casual sex and how the federal government shutdown impacted rides to and from the U.S. Capitol. It can certainly track data of more obvious use to public officials, such as pickup times in low-income neighborhoods and price surges. Uber can accurately and seamlessly measure safety, pricing, and equity of service—the goals at the heart of taxi regulation. This means that the company is right that it shouldn’t be subject to the chokehold of the taxi commissions.”

For months Dallas City Hall has been grappling with a proposal intended to ensure there’s not a sequel to the always thrilling tale Death Rays from Museum Tower Attack the Nasher. So far, though, no luck: Despite months of backing and forthing, and task force meetings with building officials and folks living in the shadow of Museum Tower, the development community is still adamantly opposed to a wholesale ordinance rewrite that would limit a new building’s exterior reflectivity of “visible light” to 15 percent.

That point was reiterated in a missive sent to Mayor Mike Rawlings and the Dallas City Council on Friday that’s signed by, among others, the American Institute of Architects’ Dallas chapter, The Real Estate Council, Downtown Dallas Inc. and Uptown Dallas Inc. Long story short, says the missive, cracking down on building reflectivity via a code amendment is “inappropriate” and “unnecessarily restrictive.” Says the letter, zoning issues should be “neighborhood-specific,” and dealt with via existing or newly created planned development district ordinances.

“The City of Dallas has been a strong leader in creating appropriate regulations to protect the public good,” says the letter, “and we believe that this local neighborhood assessment of reflectivity will serve the citizens better than a city-wide regulation that ignores the nuances of good community development.”

Click to enlarge: Museum Tower as seen from the Nasher Sculpture Center

The proposed ordinance, “Attenuation of Solar Reflectivity Impact on Neighboring Properties,” started making the rounds in July. It says its intention is to cut down on that “undesirable glare for pedestrians and [the] potentially hazardous glare for motorists.” It also attempts to address the still-unresolved battle pitting the Nasher against Museum Tower, the latter of which continues to push as a solution what our Mark Lamster recently referred to as “a bastardized Ferris wheel sculpture.” Says the proposed ordinance, “Reflective materials can also impose additional heatload and discomfort glare on other buildings.”

Neal Sleeper, the Cityplace developer and an opponent of the wholesale rewrite, has been to one meeting consisting of developers, architects, city staffers and folks in support of the ordinance change. Petey Parker, a consultant living in One Arts Plaza who is all for the do-over, says there have been two meetings, with a third scheduled early in the new year.

Sleeper says the proposal is overreaching, and that the 15 percent figure “seems like an arbitrary number.” He also says the proposal could limit developers’ ability to get Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (or LEED) certification.

“Why do a code change, because there are PDs all over the city that limit reflectivity,” he says. “The code change would trump everything else. When we dis We didn’t understand it. And we felt the limit, 15 percent, was overkill. This whole thing started as a result of the Museum Tower-Nasher situation. Some residents complained about it, and supposedly someone on the council asked the staff to look into this and come up with something. And this was it?”

Parker was one of those who complained, and says the two meetings have been relatively productive. She also says her group just sent a letter to the city’s chief building official, Larry Holmes, offering an alternate proposal that caps buildings’ reflectivity at 20 percent, unless a developer receives a variance from city hall. She also points out that buildings below a certain height wouldn’t need any cap at all under her group’s proposal.

At the end of last week, the city of Dallas sued home builder Mario Davey for violating Article X of the Dallas City Code, which regulates, among other things, tree preservation in the city limits.

Says the suit, in June 2006 Davey “illegally clear cut approximately 29 trees” from a vacant half-acre East Dallas lot where he planned on building a handful of homes. The city wants him to pay somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000 for violating the tree ordinance, which says a person who pulls down a tree must either replace that tree with a new one or pay into a reforestation fund.

“The city does take the tree ordinance seriously,” says First Assistant City Attorney Chris Bowers, who helped pen the original law. Bowers says the City Attorney’s Office only recently became aware of the Easton Road case involving Davey and the taken-down trees.

“Until recently our arborists believed writing tickets was the only way it could be enforced,” he says. “I think the city will probably be filing more civil lawsuits to enforce against those who violate the tree ordinance in the future.”

The thing is, Davey doesn’t argue with the allegations. The owner of UK Builders Dallas says that, yes, in 2006 he “absolutely cut them down because I was going to build four houses” on the lot. He also knocked down an existing house on the lot.

Regardless, says Davey, the city’s already gone after him twice in municipal court — and lost both times. He wasn’t aware he was being sued in Dallas County District Court until contacted by The Dallas Morning News. And, suffice it to say, he is not pleased.

“It’s an outrageous story,” says Davey. “The last time we were in municipal court the judge laughed them out of court. Now they’re trying to come after me in district court? It’s typical dirty politics in the city of Dallas. They don’t like me, and now they’re coming after me.”

Davey no longer owns the land: According to him and the city, he sold it in May to a Rowlett couple that wants to build on the parcel. Davey says they ran into problems with the city when they began filing construction permits of their own.

“The city said, ‘You can’t build, these trees haven’t been mitigated,’” says Davey. “I told the couple, ‘This is bull—-, they can’t stop you from building.’ They said they went after the new owner because the violation sticks with the property. I said, ‘Well, if that’s the case that’s not fair because the case was dismissed.’ Now they’ve changed their minds and said it stays with the new owner.”

City officials say 1500 Marilla’s about to get very serious about bringing environmental lawsuits — not just this one, but others related to illegal dumping in the Trinity River Watershed. There’s one case pending in district court now involving trash dumped in the floodplain; a court date has been set for next year. Both cases were filed by Melissa Miles and Chhunny Chhean, an environmental and land-use lawyer, in the City Attorney’s Office.

Bowers acknowledges it’s “unusual” for the city to file a case based solely on the tree ordinance. But it won’t be for long.

“We’ll probably file more,” he says. “And eventually the word will be out we’re going to enforce against these the way we do other code violations in the zoning and land use area.”

The city of Dallas is reviewing how it handles tax foreclosed properties after mistakenly demolishing a recently purchased home over the summer.

In a memo released Thursday, interim Assistant City Manager Charles Cato said the incident occurred after “miscommunication between the two City Departments, Real Estate and Code Compliance.”

The accidental demolition of 2007 Fordham Road, first reported by KTVT-TV (Channel 11), occurred in August after the city implemented a new system to review derelict properties and determine whether they’re occupied or candidates for demolition.

“We are reviewing our processes to ensure that this does not happen again,” Cato said.

City officials say other cities with similar apps do not report a decrease in the overall volume of service requests submitted by phone or online. The app, they said, reaches an entirely different audience.

I tried the app myself earlier this month to report a storm drain that was missing a grate. Instead of a grate, there was a barrier with a “City of Dallas 311″ label, which did not appear to be the most thorough fix. After I reported the issue via the 311 app, it was fixed in under 48 hours (see below).

The Harmony School of Nature at 8120 West Camp Wisdom Road “made a considerable amount of progress during the past two weeks and was able to complete all fire code requirements to make the building safe for occupancy, which was in itself a major accomplishment,” a city statement said.

But a new issue involving the installation of the water supply lines was discovered in recent weeks, the statement said. The lines were fixed, “however tests show that the water still does not meet standards for consumption or hand washing. Harmony plans to flush and treat the lines again and retest today,” the statement said.

If this fix is not successful, the city says it could require a “considerable amount” of more work.

School officials said in a statement on the Harmony website that they have made alternative plans to accommodate students at other area campuses. The message reads:

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Even with all our best efforts, we have some additional inspections that will not be completed in time for the start of school Tuesday, September 3. Therefore, we have made alternative plans to accommodate our students for tomorrow and possibly for the remainder of this week. Please drop off your students as you normally would here at the Harmony Nature Campus by 7:50 a.m. for elementary and 8:00 a.m. for middle and high school. We have reserved buses to safely transport students and staff members to the following Harmony Public Schools campuses within our district:

Grades K-3 students will have classes at Harmony Science Academy-Fort Worth.
Grades 4-6 students will have classes at the Harmony Science Academy-Euless.
Grade 7 students will have classes at Harmony Science Academy-Grand Prairie.
Grade 8 students will have classes at Harmony School of Innovation-Fort Worth
High School students will have classes at Hurst Conference Center.